Milking The Pro's - Part 3

If you're reading this article, you love toons as much as I do. We made it our interests, our hobbies and/or our professions. But what exactly is out there for people who love toons? I had the opportunity to ask nearly a dozen people all over the animation spectrum the four main questions that are the crux of any good brain-tapping. In this, the third section of a multi-part article, talented people in the fields of writing, composing and directing share their words of wisdom.

John Culhane is an acclaimed animation historian and author of books on Disney's Fantasia, Aladdin, and others. His latest contributions can be seen on the new special edition DVD of Disney's Bambi.

JF: What's the hardest part about being a writer and historian on the subject of animation? What's the biggest perk?

JC: The hardest part of being a writer on the subject of animation is the same difficulty that Hemingway found trying to be a writer period: "The greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you were supposed to feel, had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced... the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always." The best animators, from Shamus Culhane and Fred Moore to Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston to Glen Keane and Eric Goldberg and Andreas Deja, know the sequence of motion and fact which makes the emotion -- and the emotion is more often Joy than Sorrow. As I say on the DVD of Bambi: "Bambi says clearly that life is wondrous, and it's beautiful, and it's dangerous - and, in it, love is a song that never ends." This is the biggest perk to being a writer on animation: spending so much of your life contemplating such joy.

JF: Why did you choose this as your field?

JC: When I was seventeen, I told Walt Disney's daughter, Diane, that I considered her father what the great caricaturist David Low called "Leonardo da Disney," and told her I had to meet him to discover the secret of life. So she brought us together. I told Walt -- as he insisted I call him -- that I thought I could be happy with a career writing for and about the art of animation." Walt told me that "animation is a moving caricature of life," and "caricature is an exaggeration of the essence of something. To make any good caricature," Walt said, "you have to understand your subject. But life is a pretty tall order." What can I do about it? I asked. Walt said that I probably understood my home town, Rockford, Illinois, as well as I understood anything: he knew that he understood Arceline, Missouri, as well as he understood anything. So he advised: "Get a job on your hometown newspaper, write for your neighbors, and just keep widening the circle." I did what Walt advised, and that has made me a journalist for over 50 years now.

JF: How do I get to be where you are now?

JC: By celebrating the things worth celebrating. The Incredibles, with their heroic struggle against mediocrity, should win the Oscar for best original screenplay this year so that the importance of the film's ideals is validated before a billion people. On my birthday this year, I went with my family to see The Incredibles -- that's where I am now, enjoying joy!